


Promises to Keep

by DarknessAroundUs



Series: The Cooper-Jones Gang [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bank Robbery, F/M, Future Fic, Southside Serpent Betty Cooper, Southside Serpent Jughead Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 11:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18497902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessAroundUs/pseuds/DarknessAroundUs
Summary: Joaquin is the man inside, Sweat Pea is the muscle, Toni’s the getaway driver, and Jughead’s job is to yell “Get down on the ground.”Betty's job is to pretend to be surprised.Prequel to the Total Dark Sublime. Can be read as a stand alone.





	Promises to Keep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittiLee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittiLee/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for the amazing, wonderful, smart, clever, super talented KittiLee! Thank you so much for being such a wonderful long-distance friend and a fabulous email partner!
> 
> I went back and forth on what to write KittiLee for her Birthday (a new story in the Grimm universe was a serious contender), but I ultimately settled on this because TDS was the first story she read of mine and really connected to.
> 
> Also a huge thanks is owed to MotherMaple for Beta-ing this. She really made this story so much better, and I am incredibly grateful to her feedback.
> 
> This is the prequel to Total Dark Sublime, a prequel that i have wanted to write, but procrastinated on since completing TDS about six months ago. 
> 
> Technically it takes place between the first and second chapters of TDS, but you don’t need to have read the first chapter of TDS for this to make sense. You could go straight from here to the second chapter of TDS if you’ve never read TDS before.
> 
> This is a future fic, but because I wrote TDS before season three started, it features canon divergence from the end of Season 2 on. 
> 
> All you need to know is that Betty and Jughead felt a lot of responsibility for the Serpents after what happened in Season 2, and for a while Jughed, Toni, and Sweet Pea were dealing. That ended poorly, particularly for Betty, but she came up with a money making plan B. Which brings us to this story.

**We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:  
Words are for those with promises to keep.**

**From Their Lonely Betters by W.H. Auden**

**1.**

Betty forces a smile onto her face and pushes her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. The old man standing across the counter from her scowls, and she hasn’t even opened her mouth yet.

“How may I help you today?” she asks. 

“You can deposit this check right now, young lady,” the man says, slapping a creased check down on the counter.

“I can do that.” Betty flips the check over. “Could you please endorse it first?” She asks this sentence with her best customer service voice. A voice she has worked on perfecting for the last three months. An even tone that hints at infinite patience. Last weekend, she was surprised to see how well that tone worked on her mother.

He begrudgingly signs his name on the line and grunts a goodbye when she says, “have a nice day!”

Before Betty can wave the next customer up to the counter, her manager, Tamara Booth, walks up. “It’s your lunch break, Lilly.” 

Betty smiles and places an Away placard on her counter before going back to the break room.

She removes her lunch from the fridge and eats it across from Thomas, who has long blond hair he wears in a bun. Thomas also has a frustrating habit of flirting with her.

Lilly is single, but Betty has been in a relationship since she was 15. She still nods and smiles politely, but she will let him down nicely if he ever actually asks her out. She’s already turned down offers from the two other male tellers.

It’s the first time Betty has gone undercover like this, but it is not the first time she’s robbed a bank. 

Their first bank heist was a simple in-and-out adventure. They had only taken what was in the cash registers. Sweet Pea, Jughead, and Joaquin had gone in, masks down, guns out, and she had driven the getaway car. 

The cash they’d stolen had taken care of the Serpents for the last six months. It also enabled her to buy the fake ID that transformed her into Lilly and invest properly in this job. 

This job, their second, is a more serious one because they’re going for the vault. 

The vault is a real challenge. Banks don’t want customers to know this, but most robberies are successful as long as the robbers stick to the cash on hand. Most attempts at serious money, at the money in the vault, fail. 

But if they manage to actually succeed in stealing from the vault, they should never have to do a bank robbery again. That’s Betty’s hope, anyways. 

Betty nods at Thomas between bites of her sandwich. She’s tried to become involved in the culture here, by going to every after work function the bank has sponsored, and a few unofficial gatherings as well. It’s part of how she blends in here. Part of how she has become so close to Tamara. 

Sweet Pea teases her for being part of the corporate culture and she points out that when she’s undercover she’s not Betty, but Lilly, a mild-mannered, inquisitive version of herself, probably the version of herself Alice actually hoped she was raising.

Betty likes to tease that Sweet Pea should have been the one to go undercover. He always growls angrily at the joke. 

Betty wonders if Jughead could have gone undercover. She thinks he would be terrible at it. Outside of Betty, he rarely obeys anyone, and for someone who self identifies as a loner, he is awful at keeping his opinions to himself.

If Jughead was in the same situation Betty currently finds herself in, he would not have befriended Tamara and he probably would have punched Thomas by now. Betty forces herself not to laugh at the thought of her stubborn husband trying to pretend to be an employee. Instead, she focuses on Thomas and what he is saying.

After she finishes eating, she returns to the counter. The bank is quiet for a minute, there are no customers in line, and all the other tellers are chatting about their kids.

Neither Betty or Lilly have kids, so she smiles politely and nods every once in a while. As the customers start to trickle back into the bank, she talks to them. A few of the regulars she’d even go as far to say she’s glad to see. 

Mrs Moses comes and shows her pictures of all her grandkids. Lee Coll, a teacher at a local school, tries to set her up with her son. One of the many things Betty is looking forward to after this job is over is wearing her wedding ring again. It automatically keeps most matchmakers away from her. 

Plus in Riverdale everyone knows who she’s married to. Even when she’s not wearing her leather jacket with the snake and the crown, people are careful around her. 

After three, time slows suddenly. Betty starts to worry about what she has to do tonight, and what will happen tomorrow. She takes deep breaths and focuses on the goal - financial stability for all the Serpents. 

At 5:30 she helps Tamara lock up. Technically this is not her job, Tamara is supposed to do this alone, but as Tamara says “What Central Bank doesn’t know, won’t hurt them.” In this particular case, that is not technically true. 

When Betty goes to lock the back door, she opens it first and Joaquin enters silently. He smiles at her, his eyes full of mischief. They are both silent as Betty locks the door behind him.

The camera that focuses on the back door broke last week because of a discrete run in with one of Betty’s bobby pins. Tamara keeps talking about replacing it, but she hasn’t yet. 

Betty joins Tamara up front and Tamara locks the front door, and then Betty drives Tamara home. They’ve been carpooling for the last few weeks. 

They listen to Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off and Betty tries to forget that within the next twelve hours a gun will be held to her head, and that is if everything goes according to plan.

**2.**

The Whyte Wyrm is crowded for a Thursday night; a group of Northside jocks are playing pool. When Hiram left town, they had just enough money to buy the bar back. Sometimes Jughead regrets it; he thought they’d make more money running it then they do. As it is, they barely break even.

FP is bartending tonight. It’s obviously not the ideal occupation for a recovering alcoholic, but Jughead can’t stop him. Besides if FP spends too much time alone in the trailer, that’s not good either. At least here he has people to talk to, people to distract him. 

When Jughead was still dealing drugs, his dad knew about it. Now that they’ve switched to robbing banks, none of the Serpents that aren't directly involved know how they are making money. 

Betty likes to joke that he, Joaquin, Sweet Pea, Toni and herself should have a whole separate name. But coming up with their own name would be admitting that they’re committed to this for the longer term. None of them are ready to do that yet.

If it all goes according to plan, this should be their last job. That’s why they are attempting to take the vault. 

Jughead knows they can’t trust the Serpents as a whole with their secret, and he doesn’t want to drag his dad into this. As long as there is enough money, no one will go poking around. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s pressure he’s used to. 

FP walks over to where Jughead’s sitting at the bar. “Hey, the beer delivery guy complained that we’re behind on payments.”

“We have money for him in the safe. Can you pay him in full tomorrow?” 

“Should I give him all the money?” FP raises both eyebrows in a way that still makes Jughead feel like a small child, even though some days it’s hard to remember he ever was one.

“There should be some left over,” Jughead says with a sigh and a gaze that he hoped would make it clear that his dad should drop it. FP does, although the subject he switches to doesn’t make Jughead any happier.

“When’s Betty coming back?” 

Betty’s absence has been a point of contention. She’s managed to visit them twice during the last three months, once just a weekend ago, but she has to be careful. In order to visit, she has to dye her hair back to blonde.

Middleton, where she’s working, is a five hour drive from Riverdale, across two state lines. They couldn’t risk somewhere close and convenient like Greendale. Someone might spot her and jump to conclusions - it’s not like dark hair and glasses are much of a disguise.

Jughead visits her almost every weekend she doesn’t him, but he has to stay in her apartment to avoid attracting attention. Not that it’s a bad thing to be stuck in a one bedroom apartment with Betty after missing her all week, but the whole setup isn’t natural. He misses going for walks with her, and eating at Pop’s. It’s been hard on both of them. 

They’ve only lived together full time for the last year, but the year before that she had spent more time with him than without. 

Jughead has been careful not to complain but the other Serpents are very vocal. Everyone loves Betty at this point, and no one understands why she has to work somewhere else. (Even though he thinks the excuse they came up with - that Betty’s going to school in Vermont - is a pretty good one.) 

“Soon,” Jughead says. “I’m seeing her tonight.” Although, when he glances at his phone, he realizes that it’s later than he thought. By the time he reaches her apartment it will be about 2 in the morning, which is not ideal considering they have a big day tomorrow. 

Joaquin is already in the bank, Betty texted him that much. Toni and Sweet Pea drove up yesterday to finalize preparations, and they’re staying at a cheap motel in the town next to Middleton. 

Jughead might run the Serpents as a whole, but as far as their small group of bank robbers go, Betty is in charge. She does the research and the planning, and she is the one that gives the orders. 

When Betty first joined the Serpents, that would have been a huge problem for Pea. But, years ago, after Betty sewed up one of Sweet Pea’s cuts as well as any nurse, he started to change his attitude. 

“Just don’t ruin it with her, boy,” FP growls, and Jughead wonders if he should make it clear to his father that he and Betty are as close as they’ve ever been, that even long distance they’re partners, but he really shouldn’t waste time debunking FP’s crackpot theory that they’re on rocks.

“I’ll be back tomorrow night.” When he says that, he hopes it will be true. If he gets caught tomorrow, if they fail in any way, he might not be back here in a long time, or at all. Still, he can hardly say that to FP, who just nods and looks away. 

Sometimes, Jughead wishes that his father would feel responsible for him the way he feels responsible for his father. When he and Betty talk about having kids, in an abstract distant future sort of way, he surprises himself by wanting them so badly, by wanting to do right by them so badly, and those are only imaginary children.

Jughead drinks all of the coffee in his travel mug during the first hour of his drive. He’s jittery and nervous the whole way. The bank robbery looms heavy over every thought, every sign on the road a possible omen. He’s still on edge when he parks his car three blocks from Betty’s and walks over. He lets himself in and turns on the light. 

The main room of the apartment is small, barely room for a loveseat and a card table to eat at. The kitchen is poorly laid out and Betty is always complaining about it, but she won’t be here for much longer. 

Betty’s asleep in the bedroom. She’d been nervous when she first started working at the bank, but the closer they get to the heist, the calmer she’s become. It’s almost eerie. He hopes she’ll share the calm with him, if only for the night. 

Jughead changes in the bathroom so as not to wake her. When he gets to the bedroom and finds Betty sleeping soundly on her side, he rearranges her so that he can be the big spoon. 

She stirs in her sleep and then she scoots her hips next to his, murmuring a sleepy “I love you.” It’s perfection. 

He wonders how he will ever fall asleep with his nerves so on edge, but seconds later he’s out. 

When he wakes up, they are already making love. He slowly comes into consciousness as their bodies become more tangled. 

After, he notices how the dawn light has even made this plain apartment beautiful. It gleams a light gold pink. It illuminates Betty’s face, she’s softened by sleep and the light, and he swears he’s never seen her look so glorious. 

The birds have started singing outside the window and because he is fully awake, he doesn’t find it annoying for once.

Unbidden, the thought pops into his head that this could be the last time they have sex in a very long time. It might be the last time that they can truly talk, just the two of them, unmonitored. He can’t help but think that no amount of money is worth that, but it is too late for them to back out now. Joaquin can’t stay hidden in the bank’s employee bathroom forever.

“I love you,” he says, pressing a kiss to her lips.

“Not as much as I love you.”

“Do you want to make this a competition?” Jughead raises one eyebrow and props his head up with his arm.

“No thank you,” Betty says. She turns her head to check the time on the clock and then says mournfully, “I’ve got to be out of here in half an hour to pick Tamara up for work.” She starts to sit up, but Jughead pulls her back down. 

“Then stay in bed with me for another 15 minutes, and rush around like a madwomen for the last 15 minutes getting ready.”

“That’s not how getting ready works,” Betty says, but instead of leaving she turns and snuggles into him. He puts an arm around her waist, so she can’t escape easily. 

“I’m nervous about today,” Jughead says. He doesn’t know if he should tell her that. She seems so calm. Nothing like the morning before their first heist when she was digging her fingernails into the surface of her skin for the first time in years. This robbery will be much trickier to pull off, yet she seems at peace with everything. 

“It’s different for me. I’ve already put so much time, so much effort, into this that the nerves have all worn off for me now. I’m just hoping all the planning will pay off. We all know our role in the plan, Joaquin is already in place. It’s just a matter of time.” 

“Just a matter of time.” Jughead repeats it like it’s a mantra. Even after Betty’s left the apartment he’s repeating it to himself.

He wishes, not for the first or even the hundredth time, that he had not agreed to lead the Serpents, or that he could lead them as his father did, where he didn’t actually feel responsible for everyone’s well being. It turns out that’s not how it works for him. 

Years ago he made a promise to be a good leader, and everything in his life and Betty’s has changed because of that. He wishes he could be selfish, if not for his own sake then Betty’s. Still, when he parks the truck in front of the diner where Toni and Sweet Pea are already eating breakfast, he sees the two of them and he thinks at least if he goes down for this, he’ll have the people he loves by his side. 

He eats a plate of bacon, while Toni and Pea bicker about what kind of bike is better. The subtext of the argument, that they will buy these bikes if they manage to pull off this job, is never voiced out loud, but he feels it in the way Pea hits the table to make his point about steering.

**3.**

All the calmness Betty felt this morning is long gone. But, thanks to life-long training by Alice, she’s smiling at every customer. She doesn’t know the precise moment the heist is going to take place, but she does know it will be before noon. It’s 11:30 now and every breath she takes feels rushed, uneven.

Still, she politely hands the mom with the baby on her hip an envelope full of cash, before wishing her “A very nice day.” 

As the next customer approaches the desk, she hears Thomas humming Beautiful Day in the background behind her. 

That’s when two men in black enter the bank. Their faces are covered in ski masks and they have sawed-off shotguns at the ready. One of them starts yelling, “This is a robbery! Everyone down on the floor except for the clerks. Clerks step away from the counter. Hands up!”

It’s Jughead’s voice that is screaming these words. The man she has loved her whole life, the man she’s married to. 

In this moment, on the other side of the counter from him, she’s terrified. This is her plan set into action. She never expected to feel this way, but here she is, shaking.

The customers hit the floor and the baby starts wailing. Betty puts both hands above her head. Then out of the corner of her eye, she sees movement. 

Thomas, one booth over, is going to press the silent alarm with his knee. She catches his eye and then mouths, “Don’t. Dangerous.” His knee hovers for a moment as if he is going to press it, then he lowers his leg.

**4.**

When Jughead was sixteen and first became a Serpent, he learned something important about himself, something terrifying. 

When adrenaline hits his system, he becomes a different person, capable of violence in a way he’s usually not. He’s more decisive too.

Now with Pea by his side and a bank full of customers on their knees, all his nerves are gone. He’s never felt so powerful. He loathes that about himself, but it’s not something he can change in this moment.

Jughead spots Betty across the room, her face altered slightly by glasses, her hands above her head. 

Pea stays near the door like they planned. His eyes carefully watch the room as Jughead walks up to the counter and says, “Who’s going to take me to the vault?”

He points the gun at Thomas, whose raised hands are trembling. Thomas says “No, not me. Anyone but me,” which is exactly how Betty predicted Thomas would behave in this situation. 

Jughead swivels away from Thomas and points the gun at Betty. His heart clenches. He knew he would have to do this. Hell, they had practiced doing this, but still it feels awful, his wife on the other end of the barrel. It’s all part of the plan. It’s a good thing there’s nothing in his gun. Only Pea’s is loaded. 

He forces his voice to come out loud and harsh. “Lead me to the vault.” Betty nods. Her nerves are showing as she leads him to the back room, shaking. She opens one door and then another. 

Jughead hates leaving Sweet Pea alone and outnumbered in the bank, but there is no other way. They’d debated bringing a sixth person in, but Jughead didn’t want to ruin anyone else's life. Fangs would have been the obvious choice at one point, but he has a partner and a baby now. 

Jughead really doesn’t want to drag anyone with kids into this shit. By the time he and Betty have their own, this will all be part of the distant past. 

When they pass the break room, Jughead spots Tamara in there alone, eating a granola bar on the one communal sofa as if nothing is wrong. Jughead realizes she has headphones in, and she has no clue what is going on.

Jughead gruffly orders Betty to open the windowed door, and she obeys, her fingers twitching.

Tamara might be a nice person - Betty swears she is - but as far as managers go, she’s clearly terrible. Still on this particular occasion it’s working to their advantage. 

She looks up from her granola bar and notices him standing there, his gun visible. Tamara’s eyes go wide and she tosses her granola bar in the air in shock. In another context Jughead would be laughing, but not in this one.

“Both of you stand against the wall,” Jughead says, pointing his gun in a way that makes it clear which one. Betty flinches and Jughead can’t tell if it’s acting or not, but a part of him wants to drop the weapon and tell her it’s all ok, that he loves her, even though that’s the exact opposite of what she would want him to do.

He glances at the watch he’s wearing for the occasion. He has three minutes to pull off this plan and he’s got to time it right. 

Tamara and Betty stand side by side against the wall. Both women are focused on him, on the weapon he carries.

“Turn around and face the wall,” he barks. Tamara turns so quickly that he barely sees her move. She presses her face against the wall, and he suspects she’s crying. 

Betty turns more slowly, and he almost feels like she’s going to wink at him, make it clear that it’s all good between them. For a second he feels tempted to wink at her, to send her love the only way he can right now. But she’s facing the wall by the time he processes that thought, and it’s probably for the best anyway. He doesn’t want anything to be caught on videotape. 

Joaquin must have heard him order the women to face the wall because suddenly he’s by Jughead’s side, his face covered in a balaclava. He’s spent all night and this morning in a washroom stall. Betty slapped the out of order sign on it early yesterday and apparently that was enough to keep everyone out.

Joaquin nods at Jughead and Jughead nods back. He doesn’t want to acknowledge the other man verbally because then Tamara would realize there’s someone else in the room.

“Tell me the vault code,” Jughead says. Tamara has told Betty plenty of things but never that, and now she rattles it off as if it’s her phone number. Jughead taps the numbers in on a keypad, and the vault opens.

Both men start stuffing the backpacks and the duffle bag they’ve brought full of cash. It’s efficient work, the money organized in handy bricks. Jughead yells a reminder to the women to keep their faces to the wall, even though neither has moved. 

Even only taking the larger denominations, there’s more cash here than they can carry. In fact they have to leave extra space in the duffle to prevent it from becoming too heavy. Jughead glances at his watch and realizes it’s time to go. 

Shouldering his backpack and letting the sling take the weight of the gun, he nods at Joaquin, lets out one loud whistle and runs out the back door, Joaquin at his heels. He hears the squeal of wheels from a car out front and he hopes that it’s Sweet Pea and Toni’s car taking off. 

He lunges onto his bike as if it’s a race against time, even though Joaquin is the only other person in sight. Joaquin’s on his bike just as quick, and they’re gone as fast as their wheels can carry them. 

**5.**

Toni’s parked across the street from the bank, trying not to look conspicuous. 

The bank is on the main street of Middleton. Middleton is not dissimilar to Riverdale, it has the same sort of sleepy-with-a-hint-of-darkness vibe. Toni notes that every corner has been tagged with the same small whale, not that much bigger than a brick. 

She’s trying to focus on such things to keep her mind off of the clock. There’s a watch on her wrist, a clock on the dash of the car, and even one on the bank itself. Toni can only trust the time on her wrist though. She has a timer on that watch counting down. 

If the timer goes off, she’s supposed to get out of there, even if there’s no sign of Sweet Pea. Toni hates being a getaway driver. (So what if this is the only time she’s ever been a getaway driver. Once is enough to figure out that the waiting she has to do as part of the job is downright terrible.)

Her feet keep tapping against the floor of the car, specially obtained for today. Betty’s been fixing it up when she’s back in Riverdale, and Sweet Pea’s helped too, but today will be the only time they use it, even though it’s nicer than Toni’s beat up old Hyundai. It’s against Betty’s rules to keep it. 

Betty’s rules when it comes to this job are numerous to the point where it is almost overwhelming. But the main one is this - anything a witness could see and identify on the day of gets destroyed or given away. Toni hadn’t checked to see if that extended to clothes, but just in case she’s wearing her least favorite pair of shoes, and an easy-to-replace outfit of jeans and a t-shirt. She’s also wearing gloves, which feels unnatural in the warm spring weather. 

Toni’s not a big believer in God, or any higher power, but she’s found herself praying as she waits. It is hard to do nothing but sit there.

She glances down at her watch again. Less than a minute to go. She doesn’t like that; she’d hoped Pea would be out already. Toni glances up at the door of the bank again, and this time she sees Pea walking out the door. Not running, but walking.

There are a few people on the main street so he must be doing this to not draw attention to himself. His shotgun is barely visible; the bungee sling keeping it snug against his body. 

His ski mask is still on and it’s fucking June, so he looks about as discreet as a snowplow in a Fourth of July parade. 

Still, by the time Toni’s worked up the courage to yell at him to hurry up, he’s made it to the car on those long legs of his, and he gets in the back. Toni knows that is in case someone starts shooting at them, and he has to shoot back, but it still feels strange. Like she’s some sort of taxi driver. She’s pressing on the gas before he can get his seat belt on. 

Toni doesn’t drive very quickly, though. She doesn’t want to draw too much attention to them. Betty stressed the importance of being discreet, so Toni’s obeying all the traffic laws. If a chase happens, those laws will go out the window, but she drives three blocks without seeing a cop car. Sweet Pea is breathing loudly in the back but he hasn’t said anything yet. 

“How’d it go?” Toni asks, glancing in the rear view mirror.

“Good, so far,” Sweet Pea says with a grin, his teeth shining, but it’s not like he knows much more than her. The real bank robbery took place in the back where he couldn’t see it. 

Then Toni notices three cop cars driving right towards them, lights flashing, sirens on. Toni wants to panic, turn the wheel and get out of there as quickly as possible. But the cop cars aren't chasing her, they’re heading straight at them.

Toni takes a deep breath and stops at the light. Sweet Pea hisses, “What the fuck?” in the back. She ignores him. 

The cars get closer and closer. The light doesn’t change. Toni’s foot itches to press hard on the gas. She resists, and it ends up being a good thing. 

All three cop cars pass them, and keep going. By the time the light turns green they are all out of sight. Toni’s hands are drenched in sweat inside the gloves, even with the air conditioning on high. 

They abandon the car at a lookout not far from town. They take the licence plates to dispose of elsewhere before grabbing the bikes they left there earlier in the day. 

Toni’s whole body is shaking at this point. Before the sound of the engines dominates, she hears Sweet Pea mutter “we did it, we did it, we did it.” at least a half dozen times. But the fact is they don’t know that yet. They haven't heard from Jughead, Joaquin, or Betty. Everyone else could be in deep shit right now. 

**6.**

Officer Lincoln paces in front of Betty as she sits in a cheap plastic chair, next to an equally cheap plastic desk. It’s been five hours since the robbery and Betty has spent four of them at the police station, and an hour in the interrogation room, shuffling her feet. 

All of the bank staff are here, as well as everyone that had the misfortune of being a customer at the time of the robbery. Betty can hear the baby wail even in here, and she feels for the mother. 

They already made Betty unlock her phone and they have been reviewing it thoroughly. Betty brought her decoy phone to work today, like every other day. Her normal phone, the one that would reveal the hours she spent chatting to Jughead, is hidden beneath the floorboards of her bedroom. The phone the police have is the phone she’s always used for Tamara and the other people she works with, so it does have a call history. 

Officer Lincoln shakes his head at her, not like he’s mad, just like he’s confused. 

The good news is that her fake ID has held up. He doesn’t know she’s really Betty Cooper, the daughter of a serial killer, the wife of a gang leader, a member of that gang herself. Lilly doesn’t have any of those ties. She’s also 21 on Lilly’s ID, when in reality she just turned 20.

Betty hasn’t felt 20 in a long time.

The bad news is that Officer Lincoln is smarter than Sherif Keller. This isn’t a particularly high bar, but it still makes Betty nervous.

Officer Lincoln sits down across from her, on his very own cheap plastic chair and says, “Tell me again what happened today?”

So she goes through the whole boring litany of almost-truths for the second time. She woke up alone (lie) and ate breakfast alone (truth), and picked up Tamara (truth), and had a normal day at the bank, till the robbers showed up (truth).

Nothing Betty did today was illegal. She’s thankful for that, because she’s not a particularly good liar. 

When Officer Lincoln moves on from reviewing the day, and the events at the bank, to ask questions about Betty - or rather Lilly's past, Betty feels even more on edge. 

“Why did you move here?” Officer Lincoln asks, his eyes focused on Betty.

“My mother died. She was my big tie to Burlington. When she passed I got very depressed.” Betty tries to put emotion into her voice. She focuses on the actual upsetting things that have happened in her life, and there are a lot to choose from even though her mother is very much alive. 

“I needed a change of scenery, and I didn’t really know where to go, so I applied to a bunch of jobs, ‘til I got this one.” There was a lot of truth in that lie. Not in terms of needing a change, but the fact is Betty had applied to hundreds of banks, and after doing all three follow up interviews had decided that this bank would probably be the easiest to rob. It had a back door, and Tamara was a much more laid back manager than the other two. 

Lincoln nods. “Do you have friends here?”

“I do now. Everyone who works at the bank really. Although I spend the most time with Tamara.”

Betty measures her words carefully. She knows that Lincoln is parsing everything. That other employees are telling him things about her, and everyone knows that she and Tamara are close. She doesn’t want to it to seem like she’s keeping anything from Lincoln, when in reality she is keeping everything from him.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

Betty is grateful for the wording. It means she won’t have to lie. “No.”

Lincoln gets up and leaves the room without saying anything, and Betty wonders if that’s a bad sign. 

She doesn’t know what happened after the robbery. Jughead could have been caught a block from the bank for all she knows. But she thinks that probably isn’t the case. If that happened they would have let the customers go at least. That crying baby in the hall is actually a good sign. Still, she can’t help but worry.

She hates being left alone with her thoughts in a situation like this one, although she does have mental tricks for situations like this one. The last time she used them was when she was tortured by a rival gang hoping that she would tell them where Jughead kept the drugs the Serpents used to sell. 

Betty can’t close her eyes because she knows someone is watching her through the two way mirror, so she focuses on the white brick wall across from her till all the bricks blur together, and she tries to think of the places she feels safest in the world. 

‘With Jughead’ was, as always, the easy answer. In a world full of people who have let her down, he is the one person who has chosen to always believe her, to always protect her, to prioritize her. If she hadn’t had him in her life for so long, she would probably have lost her faith in humanity, which was tenuous at best. 

She also felt safe in the Whyte Wyrm. The loud screaming and occasional bar fights had become part of her life a long time ago. Before Veronica left town, Betty remembers taking her there, and Veronica being deeply uncomfortable, her eyes sweeping the room again and again. 

Even Archie was on edge there. Whenever he came back and visited them, he would make sure his back was facing a wall and his eyes would focus on the doors. He would watch everyone who exited and entered. 

In other parts of town, at Pop’s even, anyone could come up to where she was sitting and speak their mind. She could be lectured about the Black Hood, or Polly’s cult, or the Serpents. If she was with Jughead, or Pop was nearby, they might keep their opinion to themselves, but if she was alone, they would snarl hateful words. Yet if someone as much as flirted with Betty at the Wyrm they’d be out. Betty didn’t even have to say anything. She knew everyone in the room. 

Their apartment was her safe place as well. They hadn’t been in it long, and Jughead’s old place still felt more like home. But she liked the view of Sweetwater from the tiny balcony. She tried to focus on the way she felt on Sunday mornings in their bed, Jughead bringing her a cup of coffee and the New York Times. They’d go through it together, reading whatever they wanted to share out loud.

“Lilly,” Officer Lincoln said and Betty looked up and met his gaze. She hadn’t heard him enter the room. 

“Yes.” 

“You are free to go. Just don’t leave town.”

Betty nods. She knows it’s standard protocol. Of course she’s tempted to leave the station, hop in her car and never look back. But that’s not what the plan calls for. She’d probably get away if she did that, but it would make the authorities dig much deeper. The smarter thing, the harder thing, is to stay in town, let the cops dig, and pray that they find nothing. 

 

**7.**

Joaquin would laugh at Jughead for pacing the length of the hotel room if, a) it didn’t get on his nerves so much, and, b) he didn’t wish he could be doing the same. 

Instead, Joaquin is stretching against a wall. His calf muscles are beyond tight from spending all morning perched on top of the toilet in the employee washroom. He’s exhausted too. He’d been too nervous to sleep last night and his tiredness is not helping his anxiety

When he and Jughead first got back to the hotel room and saw the bikes outside, they cheered with relief. Adrenalin ran through his whole body when they removed the money from the bags. They haven’t even had time to count it yet, but the sheer amount of space it takes up is impressive. It isn’t anything lower than twenty dollar bills, either. 

The first hour passed quickly enough. He, Sweet Pea, and Toni drank some beers. The second hour passed slower, as Betty still hadn’t called, texted or emailed. The fourth hour, the one they’re currently in, is excruciating. It’s too slow, agonizing even. And she isn’t even his partner. 

Jughead checks his phone compulsively. 

“Should we get out of here just in case?” Sweet Pea asks.

Toni laughs sharply. “A gang of thugs had her for over 48 hours and Betty didn’t break. I don’t think the cops could do anything to Betty that was worse than what the Pack did. Or the Ghoulies, for that matter.”

Sweet Pea flushes. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“What way did you mean it?” Jughead asks, his voice a low snarl.

Thankfully, they’re saved from that oncoming fight by Jughead’s phone ringing. It’s Betty on facetime, her face visible even though she can’t see them yet. She looks a mix of tired and drained. 

Jughead answers it and they all crowd in around him. 

“How are you?” Betty and Jughead ask each other at the same time.

“Jinx,” Toni offers up.

“You guys first,” Betty says. 

“We’re rich,” Sweet Pea volunteers.

“That’s the news I was hoping for!”

“We weren’t spotted, or chased or anything,” Joaquin says. 

Toni repeats the story of their close call after that. They talk for a long time. About everything that went right, everything that almost went wrong, and finally it devolves into the general ribbing it always does, and Jughead tells Betty he’ll call her back later when he’s alone.

After they hang up, it feels weird celebrating without her, but they do a bit. Jughead doesn’t drink but he allows himself a rare cigarette in the parking lot. Joaquin is tipsy by then, and it takes a lot to get him tipsy. The whole world feels like it’s glowing around him. 

They’re not completely out of the woods, though. In order to avoid suspicion, Betty is planning to spend at least another month at the bank. But, as Jughead points out, at least they’ll be able to cover things like electricity and rent for all the Serpents for the foreseeable future. They’ll have some money left over to treat themselves, too. 

Later, when Toni, who he’s sharing a room with, is asleep, he phones up Kevin. The video footage is grainy because it’s dark on both ends, but he loves seeing his partner’s face. Kevin’s away at college getting his degree, but they still talk almost every night.

“Where are you?” Kevin asks. 

“At home,” Joaquin says. The room around him is dark, It’s not like Kevin can see much.

“You got a tacky electronic clock since I visited last?” Kevin asks. 

Joaquin is so pissed at himself for not moving it. He must not be as sober as he likes to think he is. The shock shows on his face and Kevin asks, “Are you cheating on me?”

“No,” Joaquin says. “I’m at a hotel.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“With?” 

“Toni.” She is the only other person in the room after all. 

Kevin exhales loudly. “Do I want to know what you’re doing at a hotel?’

“No.” 

“Are you dealing again?”

“Never.” Joaquin would tell Kevin what he was doing, if he thought Kevin could handle it. Kevin doesn’t mind minor illegalities, even thinks that they’re fun from time to time. This is far from that. For both their sakes, for the sake of their relationship, Joaquin knows the best thing he can do is stay quiet.

“Are you drunk?” 

“A little. We were celebrating the fact that what we were doing is over now.” He hopes that statement is vague and reassuring enough for Kevin. 

Kevin’s face relaxes a little. “Over. I like the sound of that.”

**8.**

Betty continues to work at Central Bank for another month. It’s funny to continue to work at a bank she herself has robbed, but if she left right away it would be too suspicious. 

Tamara is severely reprimanded after the robbery, but kept on as the manager. The police never discover that one of the thieves was in the building overnight. No one ever figures out that Betty was helping Tamara close. Tamara actually thanks Betty for not disclosing it as part of the investigation. 

Betty’s on edge at first, waiting for someone to accuse her of being in on it, or for the police to show up at her door.

After the first week, it begins to feel like a normal job. Most of the tension she felt before they pulled off the heist is gone, and Betty thinks of herself as a normal employee, because she behaves like one. She isn’t secretly writing down when the scheduled cash deliveries are, or keeping an eye on where the cameras are positioned. 

It’s soothing, but it is also boring, and Betty is relieved once enough time has passed for her to hand in her two weeks notice. She’s done with being Lilly. She’s tired of having brown hair and glasses with thick frames. She’s over being single in public.

Tamara promises to write a glowing letter of recommendation for her, and then actually follows through and does it. When Betty holds that piece of paper in her hands, her hands shake a little. 

Still, she hugs Tamara goodbye, and only once she’s back in her and Jughead’s apartment in Riverdale, her ID that says Lilly Cook and her recommendation letter tucked away in an air vent, does she dye her hair back to blond, and throw out the damn glasses. 

The first weekend she’s back, they don’t actually stay in Riverdale. They drop by the Whyte Wyrm for a glass of club soda, and then they head to a hotel in New York. 

Most of the money they made is going into a savings account for the Serpents, and they’re being very careful with the money they’re spending. She vetoed brand new motorbikes for Toni and Sweet Pea, but they’d gotten new used ones. They don’t want to attract too much attention to themselves.

Jughead and she have set some aside for the future, but they’re also going to have a decadent weekend, at least by their standards. Jughead keeps joking that this is their honeymoon, and she keeps pointing out it’s almost two years late.

They go for a long walk in Central Park the first night and then eat sandwiches while watching runners do loops. Jughead pretends to critique their form, but since he never runs unless he’s forced to, Betty questions his eye for such things.

She tries not to pay extra attention to the moms jogging with the babies in strollers but she can’t help it. 

“Do you think that runner means to put all their weight on their heels?” Jughead asks. 

Betty watches the person in question and has to admit that it looks awkward, but she doesn’t say anything. Betty’s not wearing running shoes, but the strappy sandals she has on have a little arch support. She gets up, and stretches one calf and then the other.

Jughead says nothing till she starts to run. “Where are you going?” he shouts after her. 

“Where do you think?” she shouts back, turning her back to him. It’s strange because everyone else is in the latest running gear and Betty is in nice shorts and a pretty top befitting a date. 

Still, it’s less than half a mile and, sooner than she expected, she’s running back to Jughead. When she arrives back he has a loving expression on his face, but there’s also a bit of confusion there. 

“Critique me,” Betty says, sitting next to him, a little further than she was before because she’d gotten a little sweaty. Jughead doesn’t seem to mind though. He slides over so that his hip is touching hers. 

“Now you smell a little.” 

Betty sticks out her tongue at him. “Critique the run, silly.”

“You lean a little too far forward.” 

Betty nods, because it’s true.

“And you look so beautiful.”

“Jug!” she shoves him slightly, her hand pressing against his upper arm. 

“Is it my turn now?”

Betty nods, and Jughead shrugs off his plaid which is really too hot anyways. He heads off and Betty’s surprised that technique is half decent, but by the time he runs back to her, he’s panting heavily and his foot landing is sloppy and loose. The first thing he says is, “I want to die.”

It’s endearing and Betty kisses him, sweat and all. They walk back to their hotel in the muggy dusk. It’s early August and the city outside the park smells slightly of sewer, but that doesn’t seem like a bad thing, in this moment. 

Betty sometimes feels like she’ll never live anywhere but a small town, but really that doesn’t have to be the case. Now that the Serpents are financially stable, at least for a few years, they aren't tied to Riverdale the way they used to be.

She doesn’t say anything to Jughead that night. She falls asleep with her leg over his legs and her head on his chest and she wakes up once in the night, and looks out the window into the glittering city around them. Her eyes are still blurry from sleep and it almost feels like they are stranded in a field of stars. 

She wakes up again to breakfast in bed which she is sure is outlandishly expensive. 

Halfway through his waffles, Jughead looks up at Betty and says, “I can’t do that again.”

“You can’t rob a bank again?” The plan is, after all, not to. Hopefully the Serpents will be able to take care of themselves by the time the money in the savings account they set up for them runs out. 

“No. I liked that more than I expected to. I could get addicted to that.” 

Betty understands what he means. She liked it more than she anticipated. Living a double life was hard in the moment; seeing Jughead with a gun in her face was terrible, but now in retrospect, none of it was really that bad. A lot of it was thrilling.

“What can’t you do again?” Betty asks. Only in that moment does she notice the dollop of whip cream on Jughead’s nose. She doesn’t want to distract him so she resists the urge to wipe it off, and takes a sip of her coffee.

“Live seperate from you. I’m just not up for it again.”

“I agree. There is no reason to do that again. This time, I think I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.”

“Live without me?” he asks, one eyebrow raised. 

“Not that. I wanted to prove that I could leave Riverdale, that I could pull off undercover work, and coordinate a successful heist.”

Jughead leans over and kisses her softly. “You can do anything.”

“You’re biased,” Betty says, finally taking the whip cream off his nose with her finger.

“And I’d like to stay that way. Thank you very much,” Jughead says, looking smug. 

“I’ve still got to get a normal job.” 

“You pulled off that heist, you can figure anything out.”Jughead kisses her again, an arm looped around her shoulder. He’s not paying attention to the waffles anymore. “Thank you for being my best friend.”

“Anytime.”

“I think what you meant to say was all the time,” Jughead says, and then without preamble he removes her shirt, (which is, in fact, his shirt). 

**9.**

Sweet Pea’s smoking a joint outside Betty and Jughead’s new apartment in Harlem when he sees Archie coming down the street, squinting down at his phone and then up at the addresses. It’s early fall and it has just started to get dark noticeably earlier. 

Sweet Pea whistles and Archie looks up and waves at him, walking over. He and Archie get along a lot better now than they did in High School. They share two close friends after all.

It also helps that he and Archie have a fair amount in common. They both drink too much on occasion, smoke weed, and chase women. As much as Sweet Pea loves Betty and Jughead, they are, for all intents and purposes, an old married couple that are substance adverse. 

Also, Jughead tends to relax more around Archie, probably because he’s never been Archie’s boss, or maybe because Archie isn’t aware of all the shit Jughead’s done. Archie treats his two best friends like they’re the kids he grew up with, not two of the toughest, smartest criminals Sweet Pea’s ever met.

“It’s been a while,” Archie observes. “Are you moving to the city or just down for the weekend?”

“Just down for the weekend for now,” Sweet Pea says. “Although now Jughead has made it out of Riverdale, I’m a little tempted to follow.”

“Who else is coming to this party?” Archie asks.

“Just Toni and Joaquin.” A pained look crosses Archie’s face, and Sweet Pea finds it kind of funny. After all, Sweet Pea hadn’t wanted anyone but Toni and Fangs to be here. But Archie, who already lived in the city, had invited himself to the housewarming of sorts. 

Still, Pea can’t blame Archie entirely. It’s never fun being the odd man out. “Do you want to take the edge off?” Pea asks, offering Archie the blunt. 

“Thanks,” Archie says, taking it off him. They smoke for another few minutes in companionable silence. 

“I just really want them to be happy,” Archie says. “I thought they’d finally gotten out of … you know...”

Sweet Pea supposes he’s referring to The Serpents more than to Riverdale. 

“They aren't leading anymore you know. FP took it over again. It’s all legit now anyways.” All except for what they did, that is. Sweet Pea can’t exactly bring that up, in any case. 

Archie looks a little happier at that bit of information, but Sweet Pea can still see the concern in his eyes. All Archie says is, “Ok.”

Archie follows Sweet Pea upstairs. The apartment is small, and Sweet Pea expects to see a roach any minute. But they’ve painted the walls a calming shade of blue, and it is as clean as Betty can make it. 

There are photos on one wall. Two or more dozen, framed and arranged pleasingly, probably by Betty. After grabbing a beer from the fridge Pea goes over to look. 

At the top, there is one of Betty and Jughead as kids sitting on a porch swing with books on their laps, right next to one of them as adults reading in a booth at the Whyte Wyrm. Toni had taken the second photo. 

There are photos of Archie, as a kid, a teenager, and an adult up there with them, and pictures of Toni, Joaquin, Fangs and himself. There is no hint of motorcycles or the gang anywhere in the apartment. Even the pictures of Toni, Joaquin, and others are free of any lurking Serpent symbols. 

But that’s not the only thing that is absent from the collection of photos. Pea realizes there are no photos of their parents. He can’t help but smile a little at that. He thinks Jughead’s taken care of FP for far longer than FP deserves, and Alice has always been a bitch.

Pea flops on the sofa while Toni talks animatedly to Archie about how she is never going to date a redhead again (“no offence intended”). He can see Jughead kiss Betty in the kitchen, and he resists the urge to yell at them to stop it. 

Then Sweet Pea starts to tell Joaquin all about his new used bike. Halfway through their conversation, Betty and Jughead join the fray. Betty sits on the couch and Jughead sits on the floor using her legs as a backrest.

“Why did you guys decide to move here?” Archie asks. “I mean I know that you wanted to for a long time, but what actually made you take the leap?”

Sweet Pea’s curious about the answer they’re going to give him. It’s not going to involve the fact that the organization they’ve been responsible for finally having something approaching financial stability, although obviously that was the major factor.

“I think living away from Riverdale for a few months was a factor for me,” Betty says quietly. “In a different place where no one knew my past, things were easier. In Riverdale if something happened that could have hypothetically involved the Serpents, Jug or I were brought in for questioning. They had a limited pool of suspects and they knew where we lived. But in Middleton no one knew me, and so I was free to be who I actually am. When I moved back to Riverdale, I missed the anonymity.”

“That makes sense,” Archie says with a nod.

“Beside’s Betty found a job here, researching for an investment firm,” Jughead says. 

“And you can balance that with school?” 

“I’m going to quit school,” Betty says softly. “Or rather, take a year off.”

The look on Archie’s face makes it clear what he thinks about that, but he doesn’t say anything. 

Sweet Pea gets it. Archie lives in a world with stable parents and little responsibility. It’s a whole separate thing. 

Toni changes the subject by serving shots. Betty drinks two glasses of wine and ends up teasing Jughead more than she usually does. Joaquin and Archie get into a long discussion about music. Archie leaves around midnight, as the rest of them just end up crashing in the living room. 

So they stay up too late, talking about Riverdale and what everyone is up to, even though Betty and Jughead only left a week ago and not much has changed. Betty is half asleep on Jughead’s shoulder as they talk about the new bartender FP hired to replace Jughead. 

Toni teases Sweet Pea about having a crush on the new hire, and it’s true that he does, but he enjoys the ribbing, the feeling of everyone that he knows best being in the same room together, no secrets between them. 

**10.**

Betty and Jughead get back from their morning walk around the time the other Serpents are waking up. Betty makes breakfast while Jughead brews coffee, and soon Toni is capable of doing more than rubbing her eyes and yawning. 

Betty feels tired from the night before, but excited. They’ve lived here a week, but now that they’re actually having friends over, it feels real. 

Once everyone is squished around the too-tiny table eating breakfast, Joaquin looks at Betty and asks, “We’re going to do this again, yes?”

Betty feels her stomach twist with excitement and nerves. That wasn’t the plan, but more and more it’s on her mind. If they handled things properly they could set up a trust that could properly take care of the Serpents. Not just rent, but things that would help them in the long term, like money to put towards getting an education. 

“Yes.” Everyone looks more alert suddenly, as if they hadn’t had too much to drink last night and woken up just a half an hour ago. Joaquin has a grin on his face, the one that promises trouble, and Sweet Pea makes a sound like a child who was just given candy, Toni mutters something that sounds a lot like hell to the yes. “But,” Betty continues, “this time Joaquin and Pea are going undercover.” 

Both men say ‘hell no!’ in unison, and Toni falls off her chair laughing.

They might have moved to NYC. They might be starting a whole new chapter of their lives together, but Betty’s not ready to become just another law abiding citizen, just yet. She’s always loved solving crimes with Jughead, but it turns out that committing them with him is almost as fun.

**Author's Note:**

> I am always grateful for comments!


End file.
